ARCHIVED - Basque government proposes new law to make Covid vaccination compulsory

Similar proposed measures have already been overturned in the Balearics and Galicia

The regional government of the Basque Country has become the latest in Spain to contemplate legislation to make vaccination obligatory against Covid-19 and any similar pandemic in the future, adding further fuel to a debate which has become more and more heated as the immunization campaign has progressed.

The Basque government has presented a draft for a new Public Health Law which includes compulsory vaccination in situations where there is a “serious threat for the health of the general population”, as has been the case since coronavirus reached Spain early in 2020. If it prospers, the law will be debated in parliament during the second half of this year, and if it is then passed it will override an “Anti-Pandemic Law” which was approved in June.

However, before this proposal becomes law it must overcome a number of hurdles which have already blocked the way for other regional governments proposing similar legislation: in Galicia a proposed “Vaccination Law” was abandoned after the national government lodged an objection with Spain’s Constitutional Court.

Meanwhile, in the Balearic Islands a proposed law which would allow the regional government to oblige residents to receive their jabs and to confine people to their own municipalities in areas with especially high coronavirus incidence rates is also the subject of legal proceedings. The far-right wing part Vox, which recently succeeded in having the initial national state of emergency in 2020 declared illegal, has submitted a complaint to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that such measures infringe fundamental rights.

Vox have already succeeded in overturning other pandemic rules introduced by the regional governments of Aragón, Valencia, Canarias, Navarra, Galicia and the Balearic Islands.